Quick update from the desk. Progress on the Extrevean and on the 2 Afflictors. The second Afflictor is purposefully off screen hiding. There's also progress on the Archangel, but that's off in a separate set of posts.
So more assembly on the main body. Everything except the wings at this point, along with green stuff work on all these parts as well. Something in particular I'd like to point out is the tail. I opted to run a pin from the base, outward, and then up into the tail to help stabilize it. This also allows the tail to curve upwards a lot more and give just a hint extra sense of movement overall. I really didn't like the idea of having the tail simply resting on the ground.
Finished Pendrake (finally) towards my April painting goal. I'm already halfway through the month and still a long ways from my goal. It's been a brutal month for work and I'm just getting crushed. It'll be a miracle if I pull this one off.
 Ok, first the good news. I got some solid progress in this week on assembling the Archangel. Here you can obviously see a big chunk of assembly in getting the main body attached to the base along with the back half of the head, the left leg and leg chitin, and the upper half of the tail. I've done the vast majority of the gap filling as well which really feels good. Not pictured here, but I also got the upper and lower half of the head put together but didn't get them attached to the neck yet. Ok, good news over. Let's take a look at the bad news. |
 In my "quick scan" of the parts in the store and from before I totally missed a major problem: one of the claws on the wings is entirely missing. You can see it here. There appears to be a small hole as if to receive a pin, but there's no claw in the kit to go there. My plan at this point is to try to sculpt one myself. A friend of mine classified this project as a "collaborative sculpting experience" which is turning out to be somewhat true. In any case, I'm mildly annoyed but not so much that I intend to delay progress by trying to request a replacement wing. I'd rather take this as a challenge in order to strengthen my sculpting skills. |
 The tail had a bit of a problem as well. At first glance it looks like a major issue, but it turns out this miscast is actually along the lower side of the tail and sort of blends into the surrounding base. I did some quick greenstuff work to smooth it out and then once it was attached to the main body and base it's basically unnoticeable. |
 And what do we have here? Nasty mold lines. This is actually the more frustrating thing about the wings to me. It's going to take a while to clean these up so that I'm sufficiently happy. |
 More on the wings, even though one claw was flat out missing, several of the other claws aren't really much better. Due to how the flashing braced the whole thing, the claws really were a mess. I just did some basic trimming to start but there's going to be a lot more work to do in cleaning these up. I may even just surrender on them, sculpt a whole new set, and replace the stock ones. I've got to think that one over though. |
| Body and Base: The main body and the base are pretty solid pieces. On a cursory glance, the base looks like it has virtually no trimming needed, and the body looks like it has minimal trimming. |  |
| Arms and Tail: There's actually a couple extra bits in here, but these are all the smaller resin pieces which is mostly legs, arms and the thicker half of the tail. There's also a piece of the head there. Again, upon cursory glance they look pretty good. |  |
| Bits and Tail: These are all the metal bits. Smaller wings, head, spines and claws. These bits all look great. Admittedly I worry much less about flashing and miscasts on metal parts. I rarely see miscast metal parts and trimming of metal is super easy for me. |  |
| Wings: Ok, now we come to the ugly part. Now seriously these are nice wings. Really nice. But holy smokes are they going to be ugly to trim and clean up. Really ugly. I see why they did what they did, but honestly they look like they will be a nightmare to take care of. Let's take a closer look... |  |
| Wing Details: Here's a closer picture of some of the wings. As you can see, it's a real mess for trimming. I'm not sure I should have expected any less though. In order to mold them so that they wouldn't be too fragile during transport or too difficult to get out of the molds they had to have all the extra bits, but cleaning it up is going to take a while. I imagine that I'll spend at least as much time cleaning up the wings as I do all the other pieces combined. |  |
First up are the Secret Weapon terrain pieces I finished recently. I'd been working on them very slowly for a couple weeks but I finally got on the brush and finished them a couple days ago. I really enjoyed painting them actually. I used them as an experiment opportunity, combining airbrushing, two-brush-blending, washes, pigments, oil paints, and some alcohol-based paints as well. I think they turned out pretty well actually for fast-painted terrain pieces.
Next is a quick terrain piece that I got from the Gold Rush Rampage tournament. They had these as flag markers. I used this as an opportunity to experiment with the "dot oil filter" technique. The original tutorial that I referenced was this one from Secret Weapon Miniatures, although I'll freely admit that my results are dramatically different due to the texture of the piece I was painting. In any case, it was a fun experiment and I'm looking forward to trying it some more.
Next is the progress on Pendrake. This model has suffered from a poor primer coat that's a bit grainy, but I'm muscling through it. This will be the first model in a long time where I'm painting it attached to it's base rather than separate. Normally I hate to do this, but I figured it would be good practice to do every so often.
And here's the Extreme Carnivean. It's a monster of a model and it's going to take a while. I'm starting with the exposed muscles and trying to get a good bloody/fleshy look to it. My buddy Lance described it as looking like "a sausage factory exploded", so I feel like I'm right on the mark. It still needs a few more coats though to really darken it up to make the blood look more ichor-ish.
And finally is just a little preview picture of an Afflictor being assembled. It's pretty easy to guess at what's going on here.
And this wraps up my March painting goal! Very early, but by design since I'm going to be traveling for work off and on for the next couple weeks so I needed to get these done early. I painted this guy at the same time as 5 Warspears and 5 Warmongers. Painting 11 medium based models all at once would normally feel soul crushing, but in this case I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Perhaps it was because I've been painting singles and huge based models most recently. In any case, it feels great to have all these guys done, not just for the ability to put them on the table but for the huge dent it puts into my unpainted model list. I also have to admit, my meager and crowded desk was pretty much at capacity having 11 medium based models in progress at once. Anyway time to do some reflection on the project.
What could have been better:
Warspears done for my March painting goal! Thoughts to follow with the Warspear Chieftan.
Warmongers done for my March painting goal! No in-depth analysis here. I'll talk more about it in the Warspear Chieftan post.
First is my progress on my March painting goal, the Blighted Ogryn. Things have moved forward a lot. I got the armor mostly done, the loincloths, the spears, and generally a bunch of stuff. I'm mostly down to cleanups, highlights, and details. Of course I expect that all the detail work will take a fair amount of time. In any case, I'm happy with how quickly these are moving.
Next I have a quick glimpse into one of my painting tips that has served me well for a long time now. I use post-its on my desk and make notes on the remaining things that need to be done on my current projects. This helps me to make sure I don't accidentally miss anything. I keep adding to it as I spot things and scratch them off as I complete them. This has been a valuable tool for me, particularly on squads and on competition projects.
And then there was, oh, wait, this isn't painting related. It's my margarita in the foreground while my steaks were cooking! And with that I'll sign off for the evening.
Last night I did something that pained me, but was necessary: I called it quits on the Judicator and sealed it. It pains me because I really prefer to spend a proper amount of time on a model before finishing it and moving on. The Judicator however had turned into something more like dread than joy. It also didn't help that I've been proxying my Vessel of Judgement for it multiple times and I really wanted to be able to put it on the table instead. So last night I finally decided to call it quits, seal it, and move on. Oh, and my photo setup continues to be too small for huge based model. Need to work on that. Time to do the reflection...
What could have been better:
Here's a shot of 3 of my Blighted Ogrun that are in progress for my March painting goal. I'm not bothering to show them all because all 11 are in the same state. Skin is mostly done. Fur is base coated and washed. My next big step will be to tackle the metals which will be a soul crushing task. Fortunately all the models have very accessible poses so it isn't a nightmare to paint any of them in particular.
Any here's my painting goal: 5 Warmongers, 5 Warspears, and the Warspear UA. 11 medium based models. As of last night they are all primed and ready to go. Doing this will not only make a huge dent in my overall unpainted queue, but it will clear my desk nicely for the Archangel that I've already pre-ordered and expect to arrive at the end of this month. The nice thing about painting all 11 of these at once is that it will help them be fairly consistent looking. I also have my existing War Chief as a guide so I already have a blueprint for the paint scheme ready to go.
Super fast pics of Rask since I've got a game later tonight, potentially using him too. Loved this model. Could have totally spent way more time on him, but I'm trying to close out my February projects. I probably should have done a prototype of a bogtrog before doing Rask so that I had the scheme locked, but I feel like this worked out quite well and should be fairly easy to replicate again.
Rask progress! He's mostly done. Just need to pour Envirotex. I could have easily spent way more time on him, but honestly I wanted to get him done and ready for battle. It's a sweet model though.
And the Judicator marches on. It's fully assembled now but there is still a lot of details to clean up and fix. What I really need to do is make a list of remaining work to do. But not tonight. In fact for now it's sitting on a shelf behind a cloth so that I can take a break from it and come back with fresh eyes.
First picture is of the main Judicator progress. The main torso is now attached to the legs which makes the whole thing start to feel a little more like it's coming together. There's still touch ups and work to do in general, but it was too hard to work with the torso piece separately anymore so I got it 80% done and attached it. The really big question I now have is how to manage the final painting on this beast once it's fully assembled, since there's going to be a lot of final work to do to make the whole model look cohesive, not to mention clean up a bunch of stuff.
I also got a bunch of base coating work done on the remaining parts as well as detailing work on the shoulders. I actually got pretty brave (for me) with the airbrush at this point and did some highlighting on the shoulders. There was a bit of over-spray since I wasn't using any masking for it, but nothing that I can't quickly clean up.
And now a WIP shot of Rask. He's been the project I work on while washes on the Judicator were drying. He's coming along quite well and I expect to have him done by the next weekend despite the amount of work left to do.
Yep, that's right, a second Ironback. Technically he was done at the same time as the second posse, but I hate to post back to back. This one will be super fast.
